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The purpose of this page is to act as a distribution point for a recently developed software package that models seismic wave front propagation using the fast marching method (FMM) in 3-D spherical coordinates for complex layered media. Traveltimes and ray paths of phases comprising one or more bounces and/or transmissions can be tracked in the presence of complex structures (e.g. subduction zones, heterogeneous crust). Direct transmissions in continuous media can also be tracked. The main goal of the package is to act as a general tool for computing traveltimes in laterally heterogeneous media at a variety of scales; example applications include local or regional scale tomography (the software already includes an option to calculate the Frechet derivatives), refraction/wide-angle reflection imaging, and earthquake location.

Download PDF file of a recently published (Volume 167, 2006) GJI paper (2.3 Mb) describing the multi-stage fast marching method and its implementation in the code presented here. We suggest that you look through this paper before trying to use the program. Several terms used in the README file are also defined in this paper.

Download ASCII README file (32 Kb) giving a short summary of the use of the code.

UPDATED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE (posted 27/09/2007)
Use the link below to download version 0.7 of the code. New features include improved example programs for generating input velocity and interface grid files, and the ability to save arrival time grids to file (in addition to two-point traveltimes as per earlier versions). The README and examples have been modified to show the new features.
Download version 0.7 of the Fast Marching code (517 Kb).

Recent updates to Version 0.7 of code
-> Fixed several bugs related to teleseismic initialization, that occasionally resulted in the code crashing when valid teleseismic phases were tracked.
-> Fixed a bug that occasionally caused the code to crash when tracking teleseismic arrivals in models comprising only one layer.


To unzip and untar the distribution archive, type something like the following at the command prompt:
gunzip -c fm3d_07.tar.gz | tar xvof -

Version 0.4 of the code may still be downloaded, but we strongly recommend using version 0.7, as it has experienced a longer de-bugging period and introduces several new features. Download version 0.4 of the Fast Marching code (359 Kb).